eChai in

Berlin

Berlin is Europe's consumer-tech and fintech capital. Its fintech runs on twin anchors, N26 and Trade Republic, with Raisin, Solaris and a founder-factory flywheel (finmid, Payrails) around them. Its consumer heritage is the deepest in Europe: the Zalando, HelloFresh, Delivery Hero and Gorillas quick-commerce big four were all Berlin-born, alongside Flink, Grover, Choco and Forto. Mobility and travel (Tier, sennder, GetYourGuide), climate and energy (Enpal and the wider Energiewende), and a fresh pair of AI unicorns (Parloa in agents, n8n in automation) round out the map.

A lot of that flywheel traces back to Rocket Internet, the Samwer brothers' company-builder that spun out Zalando, HelloFresh and Delivery Hero. Its alumni now seed a generation of Berlin startups and funds (Cherry Ventures, Project A, Point Nine), the way PayPal's team seeded a wave of companies in the Bay. The Merantix AI Campus, Silicon Allee and APX (the Axel Springer and Porsche accelerator, N26's first backer) anchor the newer cohorts.

For eChai, Berlin's India link is corridor-led, not a large founder diaspora. The honest picture is a handful of clean Indian-founder names (Razor Group, Omio, Zeotap) alongside a strong set of ecosystem bridges: GINSEP, the German Indian Startup Exchange Program, AsiaBerlin, the Berlin Senate's Asia-to-Berlin network with a recurring India focus, and Foundamental, a Berlin fund with an Indian-origin GP and India as a core market. eChai's Berlin chapter is dormant, so the pages below map who is building, and invite founders to help re-activate it along that India-Germany corridor.

Join eChai What is on

What is on in Berlin.

Thu 15 Oct 6 pm eChai Berlin Startup Mixer

Every gathering in Berlin

Where founders in Berlin build.

409 of Berlin's startups, on one map where they work.

The Startup Grid puts them with the city's investors, incubators and coworking spaces, and walks you round them part of town by part of town.

Open the map of Berlin

The Startup Grid

Founders here come to know a few brands well.

Those are eChai’s partner brands. Over a year, founders across the network learn their names and their work, and when somebody asks around for what they do, theirs is the name that comes up.

Partner brand founders together at Zestard HQ, Ahmedabad

What a year inside eChai does for your brand.

Each partnership comes with presence across eChai, introductions to the right founders, and a team that stays involved through the year. And each one is shaped around what the brand wants out of it.

Who you meet

Founders learn your name, then your work.

Over the year they keep running into you: at the gatherings, in the series, on the pages they read through the week. So when one of them needs what you do, they come straight to you.
We introduce you to the people you want to reach.

After seventeen years of gatherings we know who has built what, and who works with whom. Tell us who you are after, or we come to you when the right person shows up, with your story and why you two should talk.
You are invited to the gatherings that fit.

Open houses, Demo Days, the AI sessions, FailCode, the curated socials and the smaller dinners, some of them by invitation. When one fits what you do and who you want to meet, you are on the list.

What we do with you

We sit down with you on your story, your brand and your business.

One to one, more than once in the year. We have heard a few thousand founders, so you hear fairly quickly what is working, what is not, and what we would change first.
We take your team through what AI changed for us.

Almost everything eChai builds now has AI in the workflow. We go through what we tried, what worked and what wasted our time, and then connect you to founders further along than us.
You can ask us anything, whenever it comes up.

Every week we hear what founders are building, what they recommend to each other and what they have moved on from. Twice a year we go through what it means for your category. In between we answer, or find a founder who can.

Where your name runs

Your mark comes round under every page on eChai.

The wall of partner brands under the site's pages draws a different ten each time, so yours comes round on the city pages, the event pages and the notes founders read, all year. Your page on echai.ventures stays up after it, and your name runs through our LinkedIn, Instagram and X.
The blue tick puts you first wherever founders are listed.

The tick and your company's mark sit beside your name across eChai, and lists of founders put the blue ticks first: your city's people, the directory, and the roster of every gathering you go to, after its hosts and speakers. Every blue-tick founder with a photograph is on the wall of founders a member sees on signing in.
Your company carries its mark on the Startup Grid.

Where your company is on a city's map of its startups, it is drawn by your mark rather than a dot, opens on your own words and pictures, and is a stop on the tour the map offers of its partner brands.
You write and speak here under your own name.

You come into the series we run online (How Founders Use AI, the founder conversations, the long reads) where you have something real to say, and you write in Founder Notes, where founders across our cities write about what they are building.

The brands working with us.

How it works.

A partnership is for growth stage founders who want to come in as a partner brand, and it runs one year at a time. The brand fee for the year is paid to eChai. An affiliate share runs alongside it, linked to the outcomes we drive together. Both carry GST.

Everything a partnership comes with

To come in as a partner brand, write to me at [email protected] and tell me what you want the year to do for your brand.